Blessing of Amnesia
by Dr. Strangeglove
Summary: A detached observer can only watch as Rei Ayanami, herself detached, enters into the world of her junkie neighbours. While in an alerted state of consciousness, there, she has constructed an artificial place in her mind that she can call: home.


**Author's Note:** Don't read this if you have rigid social values and feel the need to impose them on other people. I'm not interested in a whining Christian informing me about the rights and wrongs of drugs. Learn by experience.

A storm had engulfed New Tokyo-3 for the last 15 hours. At school block 403 the bell rang signifying the end of the day. From the bustling crowds under their umbrellas emerged Rei Ayanami. As she walked down the road leading out of her school three people accidentally clipped her with the edge of their umbrellas as they scurried past like ants. Nobody apologised or even looked towards her. She didn't exist.

Rei continued to make her way home.

As people rushed from their places of employment to their cars to avoid the rain, Rei continued to walk as she ever did, making no deviation from the course she usually took when she walked home from school. She didn't even afford herself the protective covering of a coat or umbrella. A couple of faceless boys from another local school walked in the opposite direction to her, gawking at her now, due to the rain, translucent shirt. Making comments immediately after they had walked past her about her small bust-size and bra. She didn't exist.

Rei may have made no haste to return to her home, but to her, it wasn't really her home at all. She had felt this since she could remember. It felt like her home was somewhere else, somewhere distant. Rei knew she had been taken unlawfully from a place of peace and comfort, a paradisiacal garden. Rei waited to return to this place that permeated her conscious mind when she thought of the word: home.

Naturally she was soaked to the skin by the time she made it to her sanctuary; the soon-to-be demolished apartment block on the far western edge of New Tokyo-3. The only people left in this vast, filthy building apart from her where a couple of bands of junkies. Sometimes she would look up to their window as she made her way home from school, they were never up in the morning, seeing one of them gawking at her or the surrounding area with a mask of insipid indifference. It may come as a surprise that Rei shared a common interest with them.

No change was visible in her behaviour or facial expression to the outside observer. However, as she entered her apartment, Rei became flushed with excitement. This was a special day for her. It involved her making a huge divergence from her typical, mundane routine. Today was one of those rare occasions that she would go against orders and the advice that people would give to her. This infused her soul with a flame of excitement and anticipation. But it wasn't quite what you would expect, this is Rei Ayanami after all.

For some people, when they indulge in whatever activity makes them feel pleasure, that makes them feel satisfied with their existence. It can seem odd or even dangerous to an outside observer. This is evidenced in the immense, underground sexual-fetish scene. Freud was interested in why people develop this sort of deviant behaviour among other similar topics: 'Where does the inspiration for these strange indulgences and pleasures come from? What sort of circumstances leads to a person deviating from the norm?' This was a common question in the psychoanalytical scene when it first came to wield its influence over many minds. Freud tried to answer it, in keeping with the sexual framework that defines his work. Many weren't satisfied with Freud's answer, to some extent it has never be answered to the satisfaction of some psychologists. With Rei, it seemed that traumatic events in her childhood and throughout her life had lead her to lead the isolated existence that she does, with it's few pleasures. In such a situation, deviation from the norm into 'risky' areas may be one of few (perceived) options for the escape from pain, the extreme being suicide.

There is nothing wrong with taking such actions as suicide. These are natural proceedings if the situation is as malicious in it's design as humans are well known for producing (the holocaust being one extreme). However, in our society there is a huge emotional element that cannot be ignored by people taking such actions: Grievance by loved ones, religious beliefs and family commitments etc. These amongst others are taken into account by most people during their lives. They tie them to their lives, even if they are constrained ones. But what happens when you have nothing at all? Pro-life or pro-death? Walk the middle path of pro-choice.

Rei went through a period of cutting herself. She still had faint scares on her upper thighs and arms from where she had dug at herself with a scalpel blade. She remembered thinking 'I can control this, my body.' Rei had felt reassured of her existence because she could feel pain, control how much she felt and when. From there, without help or love, she only continue to become worst. Inflicting more pain on herself until she could take no more.

At this point in her life one of the junkies previously mentioned came to her apartment, stumbled through the unlocked door and collapsed. Rei being Rei, had no idea what to do with this strange, radical event. It was a complete mystery to her how this could happen or what to do. It aroused an excitement in her simply because it wasn't structured, there was no procedure or protocol she knew to follow. Rei was excited and confused at once, she felt a huge tension to do something but was restrained by her armour she had built around herself. She simply watched this nameless junkie slowly bleeding over her floor and eventually built up a rapor with him when he was conscious enough to hold some sort of conversation. Rei found out there were in a whole other world of people who resided in her apartment block, people who knew the magic to stop feeling pain.

Rei agreed to try heroin.

Learning by watching others, Rei adopted a somewhat limited knowledge of this drug and how to use it. She had her 'works' which consisted of a syringe, the lovingly cut bottom of a soda-can to be used as a spoon for cooking the heroin and some alcohol swabs. All of this was contained in a small metal box previously used by Nerv when they sent her the medication she needed to remain alive. Alive for someone else she hated.

Even though this was a change from her usual routine of going to school or Nerv, then returning to her apartment to muse on the strange interactions between other people and herself. She still scheduled when to take her small supply of heroin, the junkies had advised her to stick to her timetable religiously. Otherwise she would become addicted. For all their mistrust and self-absorbed egotism, the neighbourhood junkies Rei infrequently saw were decent people underneath their masks. She had a bond with them.

Rei liked, even enjoyed, the indirect bond she had to all people by being an Evangelion pilot. But there was a part of her soul that craved a direct bond with another human being. Unknown to anyone else, she had once captured a spider in her apartment and delicately guided the small creature into a matchbox where she would look after it, forming a bond she would enjoy maintaining on a more personal level. (Its revealing that people, when separated from their normal social contact, turn to animals like cats or become absorbed in a distracting hobby. Like watching cartoons or reading poorly written fanfiction of said cartoons. The situation is truly desperate when a person actually begins to create a fanfiction themselves, this could be interpreted as a cry for help rather than any sort of creative endeavour by The Author). The next day when she returned home from school and slid open the matchbox the spider was dead. Rei was quietly distraught and thought that whatever bond she had on a personal level would soon melt into death. Rei didn't want to hurt anybody. She retreated yet further into herself.

Rei made her way to her bed and sat on the edge of her emaciated mattress. A thin strip of light issued from her curtained window, revealing small amounts of spattered blood as it illuminated a path across her bed-sheets.

It was time for Rei to begin her defiant, one-fingered gesture to all of those who controlled her or wished to do so.

Firstly, Rei carefully laid out her works in front of her. This was a holy practice and required a fitting ritual. She peeled open the small packet of alcohol swabs and set them by her side. Picking up her delicately cut soda-can-bottom she applied the alcohol swabs to it, covering every surface with the 'holy water' cleansing fluid. Rei then reached under her mattress and pulled out two small rubber balloons. Both of which contained a tic-tac size amount of heroin wrapped up within. Licking her top lip, Rei prized open the balloon and extracted the heroin from it's packaging, placing it into the now sterilised soda-can-bottom. Taking her syringe for the first time, her hands trembling in expectancy, she squirted between fifty to seventy units of water into the soda-can-bottom with the heroin. Reaching once more under her thin mattress, Rei pulled out a small, blue, disposable lighter and applied a flame to the underneath of the soda-can-bottom to make the heroin dissolve faster with the water. The next part of Rei's ritual was to take the plunger out of the syringe, carefully stirring the now brownish liquid before her until it was completely dissolved and no particles could be seen. After the Second Impact there was a massive decrease in the amount of drugs that were exchanged internationally. Unfortunately what this meant was that the local dealers were able to get away with a low quality product, putting sand and other 'fillers' into the cut of heroin that was produced to save money, simply because they had no competition. What this meant for Rei was that she was forced to use a piece of cotton to filter the solution, so her veins wouldn't become flooded with small elements of whatever the dealer thought he could get away with. This ran through Rei's mind as she gently folded a piece of cotton to the correct measurements, plopping it into the mixture. She frowned and waited. The cotton expanded as it soaked up the drug, becoming brown in the process. Rei watched intensely until she was satisfied. Then, picking up her syringe again, Rei inserted the very tip of the needle into the cotton. She slowly pulled back on the plunger, the heroin being pulled through the cotton and thus purified to some extent. Sitting on the edge of her bed, Rei quickly pulled up her skirt, exposing her thigh. She choose a spot about mid-way, cleaning that area with an alcohol swab.

Everything had been done perfectly.

Rei exhaled slowly and placed the syringe so it was nearly flat against her thigh. She inserted the needle slowly, feeling the normal twang of pain. Retracting the plunger carefully she observer no blood came into the syringe. Rei had missed. Her brow puckered, she tried again. This time it hurt slightly more because the needle was slightly dulled from the first attempt. She retracted the plunger, a thin slither of blood appeared in the syringe, this meant the needle was in a vein. Smiling, Rei depressed the plunger and had to quickly pull it out from her thigh before she started to become high, otherwise she may fall back having the needle still in her. That never results in a happy ending.

The waves of elation and rapturous excitement completely overtook Rei the instant she pulled the needle from her thigh and tossed it across the room. She fell backwards on her bed overwhelmed.

If you were to ask her how it felt she couldn't use words. All she could say is that it felt like being wrapped up in the warmest blanket with the kindest, most reassuring entity in existence. As you can imagine, it would be extremely easy to fall in love with such a state. Rei had. There was no going back for her. Rei's body was as disposable as the syringe she used, to both her and Nerv.

As Rei came down from her high she became very itchy, especially around her nose. However, she felt satisfied. The same sort of aching satisfaction most people feel after sex.

At the back of her mind she knew that the drug controlled her, that he controlled her. She was just a vessel to be used by both of them. Rei hated it. The monotonous sound of the pile-driver near to her apartment seemed to become ever louder until she had to cover her ears. The filthy apartment she inhabited pressed itself into her eyeballs. Tension built up in her body until she was forced to release it all, in a scream that she muffled by biting into the back of her hand.

There she lay, on her bed, not knowing if she felt better or not. Blood seeped into the pillow where her hand lay next to her head. Then another wave similar to the first overtook her, not of elation but of apathy.

She didn't care.

Rei was numb. Pins and needles occasionally settled themselves over differing parts of her body. Her indifference increased to a level where she could even ignore her own thoughts, her own reality. Free from pain. Free from herself.

Rei finally fell asleep.


End file.
